The Praetorians

by Jean Larteguy

  “Am I your prisoner? All sorts of things have been said about what your officers did at the time of the 13th of May! The arrest of a wretched brigadier-general would certainly give them no twinge of conscience.”

  He turned to Father Roger:

  “You begin, Father. Tell the colonel and his captains what they’ve been accused of.”

  “Torture,” the priest muttered in a low voice. “You’ve kidnapped the secretary of my friend Sheik Sidi Ahmou, you’ve held him prisoner for the last three days and you’re torturing him to make him say that his master is in touch with the rebels.”

  “It’s true,” said the sheik in his deep voice. “You’re torturing him.”

  Raspéguy flung his arms out wide and, with a benign smile, replied: “Who’s denying it? Go on.”

  “Staff-Sergeant Hocène, who belonged to the Adrar Camel Corps company, was savagely done to death after being wounded.”

  “Poor chap,” said Raspéguy. “All he’d done was slit his lieutenant’s and pals’ throats and kill a paratrooper.”

  “The grocer with whom Staff-Sergeant Hocène was hiding was beaten up and tortured.”

  “Yes, he certainly took a good hiding, until he showed himself more co-operative. Now he’s in prison and we’ve allowed his son to carry on the business.”

  “A dozen men have disappeared in the M’Zil Valley, a young woman has been raped by three of your men. Other paratroopers have demanded money from the tradesmen and, because they wouldn’t pay up, they struck them.”

  “That’s nothing but lies!”

  “We have their complaints and their written statements . . .”

  “Whom were they written by? By them or by you?”

  The priest was getting worked up. Pointing his finger at the colonel:

  “You, a Christian and an officer, you have trodden the laws of humanity underfoot, you have defiled the word of God, allowed the men under your command to behave like Gestapo agents.”

  Raspéguy went white in the face.

  “You shut your ugly mug!”

  The general tried to intervene:

  “I think you’re going a little too far, Father. Your words have outstripped your thoughts.”

  “If he indulged in that sort of talk, sir, it’s because he felt he had your support. Now it’s our move. Sentries!”

  The two paratroopers entered at the double.

  “Arrest the marabout and put him in handcuffs.”

  The general tried to intervene:

  “Raspéguy, you’re out of your mind!”

  “Marindelle, speak up!”

  The captain stepped forward:

  “We have just discovered, at Sidi Ahmou’s place, just behind the mosque, a W.T. transmitter with a particularly long range, since it is capable of communicating with another station in Moroccan territory, in the Dra. The operator proved very amenable at once. That’s how we’ve just received a signal for Sidi Ahmou: ‘The convoy of arms coming from Ifni and escorted by reinforcements will cross the frontier after dark tomorrow. The dispersal of the men and the weapons will be carried out as arranged.’ The signal was in French.

  “Another thing. One-eyed Abdallah, whose real name is Braham Zakkar, is the head of the O.P.A. for the whole of the western Sahara, just as Meskri, alias Belaid, the driver of the captain of the Annexe, is the military chief. Meskri has slipped out of our clutches, but we’ve got hold of Abdallah and he’s beginning to toe the line. If you’d like to see him, sir, he’s a little thirsty, but in the best of health.”

  “Your turn now, Boisfeuras,” said Raspéguy.

  “Staff-Sergeant Hocène died of his wounds, but only this morning. He felt a certain amount of remorse; above all he considered he had been deceived. Off his own bat he spilled the beans. It was he who informed us about the W.T. transmitter.”

  “That’s all, sir,” said Raspéguy, saluting, “you can take your priest back with you. But don’t let me catch him anywhere near here. Now, since he’s capable of telling the fells all that he’s just heard, I shall ask you to keep him under your wing for three days.”

  “That’s an insult,” said the priest. “My confidence, like the general’s, has been abused.”

  “I don’t think so,” Boisfeuras gently replied. “You’ll always be on their side against us. You can’t forgive us for protecting you.”

  “I suppose I owe you an apology,” the general reluctantly said to Raspéguy.

  “What’s the point? Your confidence was abused, wasn’t it?”

  “If they hear about the marabout’s arrest the whole of the M’Zil Valley will rise in revolt. It’ll be a jehad, a holy war.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Marindelle. “The jehad’s rather out of date, like the fantasia. We’re confronted with something more solid and substantial, a revolutionary army commanded by a man who is very much like us, a certain Meskri who has been through the Vietminh schools.

  “Now’s the time you’re going to be tarred with the same brush, sir, because one of our friends, either Sidi Ahmou or Abdallah, will have to let us know the exact spot at which the convoy is due to cross the frontier.”

  The general hung his head, which made him look younger and skinnier. He turned to the colonel and the two captains.

  “Do you feel sure of your rights to the point of not hesitating to embark on that sort of warfare?”

  “We’ve got to win,” said Raspéguy, “and there’s only one way we can. We’re not the ones who chose it. And, besides, I like my soldiers more than the fells, I’m not keen on getting them killed.”

  “We took an oath to the people who acclaimed us in the Forum,” Marindelle went on. “Those people included Moslems as well as Europeans. Now’s the time to keep that oath.”

  Boisfeuras shrugged his shoulders:

  “We’ve got to do something, haven’t we, sir? Or else clear out altogether.”

  His voice was as rasping as a rusty hinge:

  “We can’t leave, can we? At least not yet, because nothing is ready. So we may as well be efficient and get it over quickly.”

  “I pity you,” said Father Roger.

  “You’d do better to pray for us, Padre,” Raspéguy retorted sharply.

  To everyone’s astonishment, he drew an old rosary out of his pocket, such as is worn by the Basques round their wrists when they go to church. He broke it in two with his powerful hands and threw it down at the feet of the white priest.

  Then, without a word, he strode out, leaving the priest, the general and the two captains to their own devices.

  Sidi Ahmou, in his fetters, appeared not to notice anything any more.

  * * * *

  The marabout remained in Min’s clutches for four hours before uttering a single word, but Abdallah talked almost at once. Dying of thirst, famished, at the end of his tether, he was obsessed by the idea of proving to Marindelle, no matter what the cost, that he was the only one in command and he alone had organized the conquest of this part of the Sahara. According to him, Meskri was a mere technical expert who had been sent to him at his request.

  But the more he asserted this, the more the captain doubted it. Marindelle was beginning to form a clearer, and therefore more human, idea of the rebellion and the violent rivalries that set at loggerheads men who were fighting for the same cause but were more envious of one another than the generals on the staff or the paratroop colonels in the field.

  According to Abdallah, the convoy of arms was to cross the undefined and contested frontier of the Moroccan, formerly Spanish, Sahara between two and three in the morning, by way of a disused camel-track which passed close to the sanded-up well of Zair.

  At six in the evening four platoons commanded by Captain Esclavier were transported by helicopter to the hammada about fifteen kilometres from the well. A strong wind was blowing and in th
e course of this operation a Sikorski crashed, the accident causing six dead and seven wounded.

  Burnt by the sun, parched by the dry desert air, the paratroops advanced, backs bowed, cheches knotted in front of their faces to protect them from the sand. So as not to be overladen, they each carried only a two-litre water-bottle. These they had drained very quickly and they now had to go without water until the parachute drop, which was to take place the following morning after the battle.

  A rapid reconnaissance flight carried out in the afternoon had enabled Esclavier to get some idea of the terrain and the difficulties it would present. It was an immense platform of black rock, abruptly intersected by a few clefts against which the sand had piled up.

  Two hundred yards from the well stood the ruins of an old fort, and a little farther on the hammada appeared as a fissure which the sand had transformed into an ugly colour and which, at a pinch, could serve as cover.

  Preceded by a sunset which set ablaze the vastest horizon the soldiers had ever seen, night fell, purple at first, then blue, and the moon came up, not blank and round, but a dazzling thin crescent. The paratroopers had the impression of creeping forward through shadows the colour of faded Chinese ink, which flickered, agile and aerial, above and beside them.

  They did their best to keep silent, not even cursing and swearing, so deafening was the slightest sound reverberating off the echoing crystal sides of this immense bell.

  From time to time the column came to a halt for no reason before setting off again, and the men all pondered on the mysterious rendezvous to which Esclavier was leading them.

  Lieutenant Chardin recalled an English poem of the 1914–18 war:

  “I have a rendezvous with death

  On some scarred slope of battered hill . . .”

  He recited it to his comrade, Second Lieutenant Michel, who put him in his place with unexpected violence:

  “Oh, shut up, you give me the willies!”

  A few stretches of wall appeared, against which the sand had piled up.

  “Halt!” Esclavier shouted. “Platoon commanders report to me! Wireless silence; no smoking!”

  Then, in a dry voice, the captain issued his orders:

  “A forward platoon will take up positions on either side of the gully formed by the dunes. This platoon is not to open fire so long as the enemy column has not reached the well. After it has passed through it will close this gully and block the exit. In the ruins of the bordj, the machine-guns and 60 mm mortars. They will be covered by a platoon which will deploy a hundred yards in front of them. This platoon will dig in right in the centre, in a semi-circle formed on either side of this point by the two other platoons. Clean your weapons carefully, the sand gets into them easily; all automatic weapons to be sited straight away.

  “Any mismanagement on the part of a single man may lead to disaster. Get that into their heads. Now, good hunting! But, remember, the quarry is going to be pretty tough.”

  For the next hour nothing could be heard but the rustling sound of shovels digging holes in the sand, or of picks bouncing off the hard black stone of the hammada. Then silence fell, punctuated now and then by the shrill cry of a fenek or jerboa, the yelp of a jackal or the exasperating laugh of a hyena.

  At half past one in the morning the distant cry of a camel reached their ears, followed a little later by the clanking of arms or chains, then a curse in Arabic and muffled footsteps.

  Péladon stroked his light machine-gun and whispered:

  “What if this piece of ironmongery has a stoppage?”

  Sergeant Molintard sidled up to him.

  “You’ll still have your grenades and carbine. Give the bolt a last wipe-over with your handkerchief. It gives one an empty feeling, being at the ends of the earth like this, waiting in the dark for God knows what. And what if things go wrong? A hundred and thirty men lost in the Sahara with empty water-bottles!”

  Staff-Sergeant Pieron came over and crouched by the machine-gun.

  “The fun will start in a few minutes,” he said. “Don’t open fire until I give the order. There’ll be no nonsense about prisoners in this show. Aim waist-high at the men, and at the camels, as the saying goes, as soon as they collapse!”

  In the moonlight there suddenly appeared about thirty camels, standing out against the skyline like Japanese-lantern figures. They were laden with cases and were mincing along with the old-fashioned gait of elderly dowagers. Fifteen or so equally ridiculous shadows were racing up and down the column brandishing sticks.

  Behind the convoy the thirty men slid down the slope of the dunes and lay flat in the sand to enable their comrades to fire over them.

  “Let them have it,” said Staff-Sergeant Pieron to Péladon.

  He laid his hand on the other’s shoulder, as though he were trying to infuse him with his own composure.

  Flames belched from the automatic weapons. A camel gave a loud human shriek and toppled over with its cases on to the stones.

  “Cease fire!” Esclavier’s voice could be heard yelling.

  Followed by three men covering him with their sub-machine-guns, he dashed forward into the midst of the camels, which formed a bleeding mass of flesh from which a few long necks emerged, thrashing the air.

  With a pick he broke open one of the cases: nothing but sand poured out.

  “There’s something wrong,” said Pieron anxiously.

  Suddenly, all round the well, the darkness blazed into life and the wall of the bordj behind which the machine-guns were sited shuddered under two blows from a bazooka.

  The hundred and fifty men of Meskri’s Sahara kattiba were attacking the paratroops in the rear.

  At once the battle developed into a hand-to-hand fight with grenades, knives and sub-machine-guns. Taken by surprise, the paratroops wavered for a few minutes.

  Then all of them heard Esclavier’s furious voice:

  “So you tried to pull a fast one on me, did you?”

  Pieron saw him outlined against the sky as he climbed up towards the fellaghas. With his sub-machine-gun at hip level, the captain was firing short bursts, as though on a practice shoot.

  A figure flung itself at him, but Esclavier jumped aside and with a blow of the butt felled the heap of rags that had fallen at his feet.

  Pieron rushed forward, and behind him all the men in his platoon. In one bound they tore themselves away from their flimsy shelter, this hole they had dug in the sand and rock and which now appeared to them more cosy than a bed, more solid than a reinforced strong-point.

  Yells, words of command and oaths intermingled. The battle started up again with renewed violence.

  All the rebels, apart from a few Moors from Tindouf, were wearing the regulation uniform of the Camel Corps company. At a long blast on a whistle they pulled back.

  So as to get a clearer picture of the situation, Esclavier had dragged himself up by his finger-tips on to a spur of rock. He was just heaving himself upright when a bullet pierced his chest. He tottered, tried to hang on, then went rolling down among the hard, knife-edged boulders.

  In one bound Pieron was by his side:

  “Have you been hit, sir?”

  “Good and properly hit,” said Esclavier, panting and clutching his battledress blouse. “Now listen, Pieron, I forbid any pursuit. The fells want to lure us into an ambush. Go and fetch Lieutenant Chardin. Everyone must go to ground in their positions and wait for the morning and reinforcements.”

  Lieutenant Chardin, with his head resting against a stone, appeared to be asleep. He had kept his rendezvous with death.

  The rebels made their way back up the dunes. Some of them came under fire from the machine-guns as they appeared over the crest. Below them their camels were waiting. They gave them their blessing and raced off into the night, their rifles across their rahallas—a saddle with a pommel in the shape of a cros
s.

  The convoy of arms was crossing the frontier a hundred kilometres to the north, escorted by a mere handful of men.

  * * * *

  “So we’ve taken a good hiding,” Raspéguy said to Marindelle. “One officer and seventeen men killed, twenty-three wounded and Esclavier’s in a bad way—it’s not certain he’ll pull through.

  “Anyway, the bastards left twenty-eight dead on the field.”

  He turned his head aside.

  “There were no wounded, because they were deserters. Thanks to you and Boisfeuras, Marindelle, we won the first round, but Meskri has got away with the second. I must have Meskri, do you hear!”

  The field telephone rang in its leather case.

  The colonel clutched it with such violence that his knuckles went white.

  “Hullo, is that you, Dia? How’s Esclavier? Listen, you saved him once before, you can’t let him die now.

  “He can’t be moved and must be operated on straight away? A surgeon’s arriving from Oran! Do you know the fellow? Dia, you’ve got to do something . . .”

  Marindelle fancied he heard a stifled sob escape from the colonel’s throat. His face was streaked with sweat mingled with sand.

  Raspéguy blurted out:

  “You see, Esclavier’s like a son to me . . . but I threw away my rosary!”

  * * * *

  A signal came in from Tiradent. A thousand men, women and children, having heard of Sidi Ahmou’s arrest, were marching on the Annexe.

  Captain Pinières thought there were some armed rebels among them and wanted to know if he should fire on them. He had only one platoon available.

  Raspéguy seized the receiver:

  “Hullo, Pinières! I’m sending you a couple of helicopters. They’ll drop you some tear-gas bombs, and if they don’t do the trick then open fire, but first of all over their heads, then lower your sights until the bastards are flat on the ground.

  “I’m sending up a reinforcement company, the one from Asamert, but it won’t get to you for another ten hours.

  “I’ve no more helicopters to spare, they’re all busy with the wounded or looking for that convoy of arms. There are only the jeeps and trucks left, but they get bogged down every few kilometres.